War Crimes

Desert Storm (1991), War on Terror (2001 - )

Iraqi soldier killed in Desert Slaughter (1991).
Perhaps 200,000 to 300,000 were killed in that attack.

Egyptian newspaper cartoon about US war on Iraq

Although an exact figure will never be known, approximately 1,500,000 people were murdered by the Einsatzgruppen. The Einsatzgruppen submitted detailed and specific reports of their actions to their superiors both by radio and written communication; these reports were checked against each other for accuracy at Heydrich's headquarters. According to those reports approximately 1,500,000 people were murdered. In evaluating this large number Justice Michael Musmanno, who presided at the trial of the Einsatzgruppen wrote:

One million human corpses is a concept too bizarre and too fantastical for normal mental comprehension. As suggested before, the mention of one million deaths produces no shock at all commensurate with its enormity because to the average brain one million is more a symbol than a quantitative measure. However, if one reads through the reports of the Einsatzgruppen and observes the small numbers getting larger, climbing into ten thousand, tens of thousands, a hundred thousand and beyond, then one can at last believe that this actually happened -- the cold-blooded, premeditated killing of one million human beings.

....

There are some who would try to deny or justify the murders committed by the Einsatzgruppen. The most benign explanation for this denial was given by Justice Michael Musmanno -- an experienced judge and hardened combat veteran -- who presided at the trial of the Einsatzgruppen. Shocked and sickened by the evidence which he heard, Justice Musmanno wrote:

One reads and reads these accounts of which here we can give only a few excerpts and yet there remains the instinct to disbelieve, to question, to doubt. There is less of a mental barrier in accepting the weirdest stories of supernatural phenomena, as for instance, water running up hill and trees with roots reaching toward the sky, than in taking at face value these narratives which go beyond the frontiers of human cruelty and savagery. Only the fact that the reports from which we have quoted came from the pens of men within the accused organizations can the human mind be assured that all this actually happened. The reports and the statements of the defendants themselves verify what otherwise would be dismissed as the product of a disordered imagination.
Judgement of the Tribunal, p. 50.

"It is the absolute responsibility of everybody in uniform to disobey an order that is either illegal or immoral."
--
General Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Press Club, February 17, 2006

Senior Pentagon official on why they censor gruesome t.v. coverage
of combat"If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never
again be any war." www.icantcomplain.com/quotes.html

"We have committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world,
and I'm going to continue to say it. And we won't stop it because of
our pride, and our arrogance as a nation."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr., March 1968

"I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal. Fortunately, we were on the winning side."
--
US General Curtis LeMay, commander of the 1945 Tokyo fire bombing operation.

"The crimes of the U.S. throughout the world have been systematic,
constant, clinical, remorseless, and fully documented but nobody talks
about them. "
-- Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter

"we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done.
We must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available
in this country if necessary. ...
"the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - my own
government"
-- Martin Luther King on the Vietnam War, April
4, 1967

"I was nineteen years old, and I'd always been told to do what
the grown-ups told me to do.... But now I tell my sons, if the government
calls, ... to use their own judgment, ... to forget about authority
... to use their own conscience. I wish somebody had told me that before
I went to Vietnam."
a U.S. soldier who had participated in the My Lai massacre, in which
a company of American soldiers shot to death women and children by the
hundreds in a tiny Vietnamese village

One two three four Every night we pray for war. Five six seven eight
Rape. Kill. Mutilate.
-- U.S. Marine Corps training chant, Camp Pendelton, 1989

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,
9 December 1948

Article 146 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 on the Protection
of Civilian Persons in Time of War requires the parties to enact legislation
to provide effective penal sanctions for those committing or ordering
to commit "grave breaches" of the Convention; and to search
for such persons and to bring them to trial. Article 147 states that
grave breaches are the following acts committed against protected persons
and property: willful killing, torture or inhumane treatment, including
biological experiments, willfully causing great suffering or serious
injury to body or health, unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful
confinement of a protected person, compelling a protected person to
serve in forces of a hostile Power, or willfully depriving a protected
person of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in the present
Convention, taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation
of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully
and wantonly.

Daniel and the rest of the world would not find out until months later
why the dead had vanished. Thousands of Iraqi soldiers, some of them alive
and firing their weapons from World War I-style trenches, were buried
by plows mounted on Abrams main battle tanks. The Abrams flanked the trench
lines so that tons of sand from the plow spoil funneled into the trenches.
Just behind the tanks, actually straddling the trench line, came M2 Bradleys
pumping 7.62mm machine gun bullets into the Iraqi troops. ...

One reason there was no trace of what happened in the Neutral Zone on
those two days were the ACEs. It stands for Armored Combat Earth movers
and they came behind the armored burial brigade leveling the ground and
smoothing away projecting Iraqi arms, legs and equipment.

PFC Joe Queen of the 1st Engineers was impervious to small arms fire
inside the cockpit of the massive earth mover. He remained cool and professional
as he smoothed away all signs of the carnage. Queen won the Bronze Star
for his efforts. "A lot of guys were scared," Queen said, "but
I enjoyed it." Col. Moreno estimated more than 70 miles of trenches
and earthen bunkers were attacked, filled in and smoothed over on Feb.
24-25.

What happened at the Neutral Zone that day has become a metaphor for
the conduct of modern warfare. While political leaders bask in voter approval
for destroying designated enemies, they are increasingly determined to
mask the reality of warfare that causes voters to recoil.

The relentless appetite of broadcasting networks made Pentagon control
a simple matter. Virtually every U.S. weapon system is monitored by television
cameras either on board warplanes and helicopters or hand-held by military
cameramen or individual soldiers. This "gun camera" footage
may be released or withheld depending on the decisions of political bosses
of the military. So when the air war began in January 1991, the media
was fed carefully selected footage by Schwarzkopf in Saudi Arabia and
Powell in Washington, DC. Most of it was downright misleading.

Briefings by Schwarzkopf and other military officers mostly featured
laser guided or television guided missiles and bombs. But of all the tons
of high explosives dropped during more than a month of night and day air
attacks, only 6 percent were smart bombs. The vast majority were controlled
by gravity, usually dropped from above 15,000 feet – 35,000 feet
for U.S. heavy bombers – where winds can dramatically affect accuracy.
And there never was any footage of B-52 bomber strikes that carpeted Iraqi
troop positions.

Just as distorted were Schwarzkopf's claims of destruction of Iraqi Scud
missiles. After the war, studies by Army and Pentagon think tanks could
not identify a single successful interception of a Scud warhead by the
U.S. Army's Patriot antimissile system.

In manipulating the first and often most lasting perception of Desert
Storm, the Bush administration produced not a single picture or video
of anyone being killed. This sanitized, bloodless presentation by military
briefers left the world presuming Desert Storm was a war without death.

That image was reinforced by limitations imposed on reporters on the
battlefield. Under rules developed by Cheney and Powell, journalists were
not allowed to move without military escorts. All interviews had to be
monitored by military public affairs escorts. Every line of copy, every
still photograph, every strip of film had to be approved – censored
– before being filed. And these rules were ruthlessly enforced.

Patrick J. Sloyan won the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of Desert Storm
while working as a senior correspondent for Newsday.

Remembering the U.S. estimate of about 13,000 Iraqi civilians killed,
this was a find that prompted a series of questions: Why not inflate
rather than deflate that total? Why not use a natural propaganda tool
and make the Allies look worse rather than better? How could
it be that the only thing Saddam Hussein and George Bush agreed upon
was that so few had died, when more than 10,000 tons of mostly
U.S. explosive power had bombarded Iraq non-stop for 43 days? ...
Word spread that an American researcher was investigating the death
toll of Desert Storm, and a self-described "friend of the truth"
contacted me. Eluding Walid for a secret meeting, I was surprised to
find myself talking with a well-placed Hussein family member. In a meeting
so brief as to appear accidental, he told me, lips barely moving, of
a civilian casualty cover-up. He hypothesized that as many as
300,000 civilians died in the conflict.
By way of example, he pointed to the many Iraqi civilians who died at
war's end, fleeing Kuwait along what the Western press called "the
highway of death."
Going on, my friend explained how, in the first days of the bombings,
Iraqi television announced a nightly civilian death toll, but when the
"bodies mounted" the practice was discontinued. Already the
war was "not popular" and becoming less so when Iraq aligned
with its old enemy Iran to allow for the flight of Iraqi fighter jets
to Iran. With the country fresh from fighting and killing Iranians,
this move "disgusted Iraq's citizens," he said.
"We did not know our angels from our demons. We were tired of dying
and did not want this war." ....
The U.S. military custom of burying dead enemies disposed of the problem,
the man said, when "thousands of Bedouins and other families were
buried side by side with warriors in mass graves around Iraq."
Fire, as well as inadequate and decentralized record keeping, assisted
in making the dead vanish. Afterward, my friend explained, Iraqi officials
planted the idea of the "clean war" by furnishing American
census-takers with the same casualty count, 8,243, listed in The Destruction.

It has been reported that John Lehman, who served the Reagan administration
as Navy Secretary, was reportedly a participant at the 1991 meeting of
the notorious Bohemian Grove, a private retreat for the elite in northern
California - www.sonic.net/~kerry/bohemian/index.html He is said to have answered "200,000"

In 1996, former US
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said of the deaths of more than
500,000 Iraqi kids under harsh and brutal US-imposed sanctions, "I
think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is
worth it."

www.namebase.org/galloway.html
Testimony of Mr. George Galloway, Member of the British Parliament, before the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Permanent Subcommittee, May 17, 2005

I opposed the Oil-for-Food program with all my heart. Not for the reasons that you are troubled by, but because it was a program which saw the death-I'm talking about the death now; I'm talking about a mass grave-of a million people, most of them children, in Iraq. The Oil-for-Food program gave 30 cents per day per Iraqi for the period of the Oil-for-Food program-30 cents for all food, all medicine, all clothes, all schools, all hospitals, all public services. I believe that the United Nations had no right to starve Iraq's people because it had fallen out with Iraq's dictator.

David Bonior, your former colleague, Senator, whom I admired very much--a former chief whip here on the Hill--described the sanctions policy as "infanticide masquerading as politics." Senator Coleman thinks that's funny, but I think it's the most profound description of that era that I have ever read--infanticide masquerading as politics.

2003
invasion of Iraq

"Can you help get my arms back? Do you think the
doctors can get me another pair of hands? If I don't get a pair of hands
I will commit suicide," cried Ali Ismaeel Abbas, 12 (above, left).
Ali's story was carried by the UK Mirror, not CNN or the Fascist News
Channel (otherwise known as Fox). On Fox and CNN, only bad men hooked
up with Saddam get blasted, not innocent kids like this. "Before
the war I did not regard America as my enemy," said Dr. Sadek al-Mukhtar.
"Now I do. War should be against the military. America is killing
civilians."

The Mysterious Death of Marla Ruzicka:
The US Military has Detailed Statistics on Civilian Casualties
by Michel Chossudovsky
www.globalresearch.ca 24 April 2005

There have been several documented cases of assassinations of journalists and
aid workers in Iraq, not to mention the attempted assassination of Italian
journalist Giuliana Sgrena:
My Truth by Giuliana Sgrena, http://globalresearch.ca/articles/SGR504A.html

www.ericblumrich.com/crime.html
December 2003
This has come to my attention, via http://www.informationclearinghouse.info
Information Clearing House.
In this video you will see an american serviceman shooting an iraqi insurgent
dead. Needless to say, this video is for MATURE AUDIENCES ONLY.
That being said, I will comment on this video...
You will clearly see that the iraqi is crawling AWAY from the source of fire.
He is obviously wounded, and is no threat to the american soldier who subsequently
kills him, from dozens of yards away.
This, by definition, is a war crime, under the Geneva Convention regarding the
wounded and captive.
What is most frightening are the cheers of his fellow marines, and the subsequent
interview with the war criminal- he beams at the camera, and exults:
"I mean, afterwards you're like, hell, yeah, that was awesome. Let's do
it again." with an expression that's like any high-school student who just
lost his virginity.
Look closely at his exultant, flushed face- this is the face of a WAR CRIMINAL-
he might look like a flushed, energetic teenager, but in reality, he's no better
than any of Hussein's brutal thugs, or a Gestapo agent exulting after shooting
his first jew.
Investigations, solely on my part, are being conducted. I WILL find this young
criminal's name, and will make DAMNED sure that he isn't going to get away with
this.

Marine General's Blunt Comments Draw Fire
Some Audience Members Clap
POSTED: 6:36 pm PST February 1, 2005
UPDATED: 12:52 pm PST February 3, 2005
SAN DIEGO -- At a panel discussion in San Diego Tuesday, a top Marine
general tells an audience that, among other things, it is "fun to shoot
some people."
General's Comment Draw Fire
The comment, made by Lt. Gen. James Mattis, came in reference to fighting insurgents
in Iraq. He went on to say, "Actually, its a lot of fun to fight. You know,
it's a hell of a hoot. I like brawling."
"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for 5 years
because they didn't wear a veil," Mattis continued. "You know, guys
like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to
shoot them."
About 200 people gathered for the discussion, held at the San Diego Convention
Center. While many military members laughed at the comments, a military expert
interviewed by NBC 7/39 called the comments "flippant."
"I was a little surprised," said Retired Vice Adm. Edward H. Martin.
"I don't think any of us who have ever fought in wars liked to kill anybody."
Mattis also discussed operational tactics of the war, calling on military members
not to underestimate the capacity of terrorists.
Mattis leads Camp Pendleton's 1st Marine Division in Iraq. He is in charge of
the Marine Corps combat development and is based in Quantico, Va.

April 4, 2003
The Mantra of Our Time "Support" or Treason? By TOM GORMAN www.counterpunch.org/gorman04042003.html
The Uniform Code of Military Justice specifically states that members of the
military must obey the lawful orders of their superiors; implicit in this is
that they are allowed to disobey unlawful orders. More explicit is one of the
supreme laws of the land mentioned above, the Nuremberg Principles: "The
fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior
does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a
moral choice was in fact possible to him." This was the principle under
which people were hanged at Nuremberg; you cannot argue that you were "just
following orders." Thus, any person, military or civilian, is responsible
for their actions if they violate international law. There is an important exception,
though. An individual is responsible only if "a moral choice was in fact
possible to him [or her]." It is debatable whether members of the American
military have such a choice, given that they are so often pushed into the service
by socioeconomic circumstance, are relentlessly brainwashed into following orders
without question, and have a diminished capacity for moral reasoning intentionally
drilled into them.

www.wsws.org/articles/2002/sep2002/news-s04.shtml
"Newsweek exposé of war crimes in Afghanistan whitewashes US role"
In a scene reminiscent of crowds of European Jews being packed into cattle cars
on their way to the Nazi death camps, the Taliban prisoners continued to arrive
by the truckload over the next three days, with 150 to 300 packed into each
container. As the doors locked behind them, they realized they would not be
returning home, as promised, but were being left to die. ....
The Newsweek report establishes prima facie evidence of war crimes. It acknowledges
the presence of US military personnel on the scene at various stages of the
atrocities. Finally, statements by Donald Rumsfeld and other US officials demonstrate
that the killing of Taliban prisoners was a matter of US policy. Taken together,
these facts are sufficient to warrant, and in fact urgently require, a full
and independent war crimes investigation in which officials not only of the
Northern Alliance, but also of the US military and the Bush administration are
prosecuted.

Atrocities in Iraq: 'I Killed Innocent People for Our Government'
By Paul Rockwell
Sacramento Bee
Sunday 16 May 2004
"We forget what war is about, what it does to those who wage it and those
who suffer from it. Those who hate war the most, I have often found, are veterans
who know it."
- Chris Hedges, New York Times reporter and author of "War Is a Force That
Gives Us Meaning"
For nearly 12 years, Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey was a hard-core,
some say gung-ho, Marine. For three years he trained fellow Marines in one of
the most grueling indoctrination rituals in military life - Marine boot camp.
The Iraq war changed Massey. The brutality, the sheer
carnage of the U.S. invasion, touched his conscience and transformed him forever.
He was honorably discharged with full severance last Dec. 31 and is now back
in his hometown, Waynsville, N.C.
When I talked with Massey last week, he expressed his
remorse at the civilian loss of life in incidents in which he himself was involved.
Q: You spent 12 years in the Marines. When were you
sent to Iraq?
A: I went to Kuwait around Jan. 17. I was in Iraq from
the get-go. And I was involved in the initial invasion.
Q: What does the public need to know about your experiences
as a Marine?
A: The cause of the Iraqi revolt against the American
occupation. What they need to know is we killed a lot of innocent people. I
think at first the Iraqis had the understanding that casualties are a part of
war. But over the course of time, the occupation hurt the Iraqis. And I didn't
see any humanitarian support.
Q: What experiences turned you against the war and made
you leave the Marines?
A: I was in charge of a platoon that consists of machine
gunners and missile men. Our job was to go into certain areas of the towns and
secure the roadways. There was this one particular incident - and there's many
more - the one that really pushed me over the edge. It involved a car with Iraqi
civilians. From all the intelligence reports we were getting, the cars were
loaded down with suicide bombs or material. That's the rhetoric we received
from intelligence. They came upon our checkpoint. We fired some warning shots.
They didn't slow down. So we lit them up.
Q: Lit up? You mean you fired machine guns?
A: Right. Every car that we lit up we were expecting
ammunition to go off. But we never heard any. Well, this particular vehicle
we didn't destroy completely, and one gentleman looked up at me and said: "Why
did you kill my brother? We didn't do anything wrong." That hit me like
a ton of bricks.
Q: He spoke English?
A: Oh, yeah.
Q: Baghdad was being bombed. The civilians were trying
to get out, right?
A: Yes. They received pamphlets, propaganda we dropped
on them. It said, "Just throw up your hands, lay down weapons." That's
what they were doing, but we were still lighting them up. They weren't in uniform.
We never found any weapons.
Q: You got to see the bodies and casualties?
A: Yeah, firsthand. I helped throw them in a ditch.
Q: Over what period did all this take place?
A: During the invasion of Baghdad.
'We Lit Him up Pretty Good'
Q: How many times were you involved in checkpoint "light-ups"?
A: Five times. There was [the city of] Rekha. The gentleman
was driving a stolen work utility van. He didn't stop. With us being trigger
happy, we didn't really give this guy much of a chance. We lit him up pretty
good. Then we inspected the back of the van. We found nothing. No explosives.
Q: The reports said the cars were loaded with explosives.
In all the incidents did you find that to be the case?
A: Never. Not once. There were no secondary explosions.
As a matter of fact, we lit up a rally after we heard a stray gunshot.
Q: A demonstration? Where?
A: On the outskirts of Baghdad. Near a military compound.
There were demonstrators at the end of the street. They were young and they
had no weapons. And when we rolled onto the scene, there was already a tank
that was parked on the side of the road. If the Iraqis wanted to do something,
they could have blown up the tank. But they didn't. They were only holding a
demonstration. Down at the end of the road, we saw some RPGs (rocket-propelled
grenades) lined up against the wall. That put us at ease because we thought:
"Wow, if they were going to blow us up, they would have done it."
Q: Were the protest signs in English or Arabic?
A: Both.
Q: Who gave the order to wipe the demonstrators out?
A: Higher command. We were told to be on the lookout
for the civilians because a lot of the Fedayeen and the Republican Guards had
tossed away uniforms and put on civilian clothes and were mounting terrorist
attacks on American soldiers. The intelligence reports that were given to us
were basically known by every member of the chain of command. The rank structure
that was implemented in Iraq by the chain of command was evident to every Marine
in Iraq. The order to shoot the demonstrators, I believe, came from senior government
officials, including intelligence communities within the military and the U.S.
government.
Q: What kind of firepower was employed?
A: M-16s, 50-cal. machine guns.
Q: You fired into six or ten kids? Were they all taken
out?
A: Oh, yeah. Well, I had a "mercy" on one
guy. When we rolled up, he was hiding behind a concrete pillar. I saw him and
raised my weapon up, and he put up his hands. He ran off. I told everybody,
"Don't shoot." Half of his foot was trailing behind him. So he was
running with half of his foot cut off.
Q: After you lit up the demonstration, how long before
the next incident?
A: Probably about one or two hours. This is another
thing, too. I am so glad I am talking with you, because I suppressed all of
this.
Q: Well, I appreciate you giving me the information,
as hard as it must be to recall the painful details.
A: That's all right. It's kind of therapy for me. Because
it's something that I had repressed for a long time.
Q: And the incident?
A: There was an incident with one of the cars. We shot
an individual with his hands up. He got out of the car. He was badly shot. We
lit him up. I don't know who started shooting first. One of the Marines came
running over to where we were and said: "You all just shot a guy with his
hands up." Man, I forgot about this.
Depleted Uranium and Cluster Bombs
Q: You mention machine guns. What can you tell me about
cluster bombs, or depleted uranium?
A: Depleted uranium. I know what it does. It's basically
like leaving plutonium rods around. I'm 32 years old. I have 80 percent of my
lung capacity. I ache all the time. I don't feel like a healthy 32-year-old.
Q: Were you in the vicinity of depleted uranium?
A: Oh, yeah. It's everywhere. DU is everywhere on the
battlefield. If you hit a tank, there's dust.
Q: Did you breath any dust?
A: Yeah.
Q: And if DU is affecting you or our troops, it's impacting
Iraqi civilians.
A: Oh, yeah. They got a big wasteland problem.
Q: Do Marines have any precautions about dealing with
DU?
A: Not that I know of. Well, if a tank gets hit, crews
are detained for a little while to make sure there are no signs or symptoms.
American tanks have depleted uranium on the sides, and the projectiles have
DU in them. If an enemy vehicle gets hit, the area gets contaminated. Dead rounds
are in the ground. The civilian populace is just now starting to learn about
it. Hell, I didn't even know about DU until two years ago. You know how I found
out about it? I read an article in Rolling Stone magazine. I just started inquiring
about it, and I said "Holy s---!"
Q: Cluster bombs are also controversial. U.N. commissions
have called for a ban. Were you acquainted with cluster bombs?
A: I had one of my Marines in my battalion who lost
his leg from an ICBM.
Q: What's an ICBM?
A: A multi-purpose cluster bomb.
Q: What happened?
A: He stepped on it. We didn't get to training about
clusters until about a month before I left.
Q: What kind of training?
A: They told us what they looked like, and not to step
on them.
Q: Were you in any areas where they were dropped?
A: Oh, yeah. They were everywhere.
Q: Dropped from the air?
A: From the air as well as artillery.
Q: Are they dropped far away from cities, or inside
the cities?
A: They are used everywhere. Now if you talked to a
Marine artillery officer, he would give you the runaround, the politically correct
answer. But for an average grunt, they're everywhere.
Q: Including inside the towns and cities?
A: Yes, if you were going into a city, you knew there
were going to be ICBMs.
Q: Cluster bombs are anti-personnel weapons. They are
not precise. They don't injure buildings, or hurt tanks. Only people and living
things. There are a lot of undetonated duds and they go off after the battles
are over.
A: Once the round leaves the tube, the cluster bomb
has a mind of its own. There's always human error. I'm going to tell you: The
armed forces are in a tight spot over there. It's starting to leak out about
the civilian casualties that are taking place. The Iraqis know. I keep hearing
reports from my Marine buddies inside that there were 200-something civilians
killed in Fallujah. The military is scrambling right now to keep the raps on
that. My understanding is Fallujah is just littered with civilian bodies.
Embedded Reporters
Q: How are the embedded reporters responding?
A: I had embedded reporters in my unit, not my platoon.
One we had was a South African reporter. He was scared s--less. We had an incident
where one of them wanted to go home.
Q: Why?
A: It was when we started going into Baghdad. When he
started seeing the civilian casualties, he started wigging out a little bit.
It didn't start until we got on the outskirts of Baghdad and started taking
civilian casualties.
Q: I would like to go back to the first incident, when
the survivor asked why did you kill his brother. Was that the incident that
pushed you over the edge, as you put it?
A: Oh, yeah. Later on I found out that was a typical
day. I talked with my commanding officer after the incident. He came up to me
and says: "Are you OK?" I said: "No, today is not a good day.
We killed a bunch of civilians." He goes: "No, today was a good day."
And when he said that, I said "Oh, my goodness, what the hell am I into?"
Q: Your feelings changed during the invasion. What was
your state of mind before the invasion?
A: I was like every other troop. My president told me
they got weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam threatened the free world,
that he had all this might and could reach us anywhere. I just bought into the
whole thing.
Q: What changed you?
A: The civilian casualties taking place. That was what
made the difference. That was when I changed.
Q: Did the revelations that the government fabricated
the evidence for war affect the troops?
A: Yes. I killed innocent people for our government.
For what? What did I do? Where is the good coming out of it? I feel like I've
had a hand in some sort of evil lie at the hands of our government. I just feel
embarrassed, ashamed about it.
Showdown with Superiors
Q: I understand that all the incidents - killing civilians
at checkpoints, itchy fingers at the rally - weigh on you. What happened with
your commanding officers? How did you deal with them?
A: There was an incident. It was right after the fall
of Baghdad, when we went back down south. On the outskirts of Karbala, we had
a morning meeting on the battle plan. I was not in a good mindset. All these
things were going through my head - about what we were doing over there. About
some of the things my troops were asking. I was holding it all inside. My lieutenant
and I got into a conversation. The conversation was striking me wrong. And I
lashed out. I looked at him and told him: "You know, I honestly feel that
what we're doing is wrong over here. We're committing genocide."
He asked me something and I said that with the killing
of civilians and the depleted uranium we're leaving over here, we're not going
to have to worry about terrorists. He didn't like that. He got up and stormed
off. And I knew right then and there that my career was over. I was talking
to my commanding officer.
Q: What happened then?
A: After I talked to the top commander, I was kind of
scurried away. I was basically put on house arrest. I didn't talk to other troops.
I didn't want to hurt them. I didn't want to jeopardize them.
I want to help people. I felt strongly about it. I had
to say something. When I was sent back to stateside, I went in front of the
sergeant major. He's in charge of 3,500-plus Marines. "Sir," I told
him, "I don't want your money. I don't want your benefits. What you did
was wrong."
It was just a personal conviction with me. I've had
an impeccable career. I chose to get out. And you know who I blame? I blame
the president of the U.S. It's not the grunt. I blame the president because
he said they had weapons of mass destruction. It was a lie.

My constituency Labour party has just voted to recommend that Tony Blair
reconsider his position as party leader because he gave British backing to
a war against Iraq without clearly expressed support from the UN.
I agree with this motion. I also believe that since Mr Blair is going ahead
with his support for a US attack without unambiguous UN authorisation, he
should be branded as a war criminal and sent to The Hague.
I have served in the House of Commons as a Labour member for 41 years, and
I would never have dreamed of saying this about any one of my previous leaders.
But Blair is a man who has disdain for both the House of Commons and international
law.
This is a grave thing to say about my leader. But it is far less serious than
the results of a war that could set western Christendom against Islam.
The overwhelming majority of international lawyers, including several who
advise the government (such as Rabinder Singh, a partner in Cherie Booth's
Matrix Chambers), have concluded that military action in Iraq without proper
UN security council authorisation is illegal under international law. The
Foreign Office's deputy legal adviser, Elizabeth Wilmhurst, resigned on precisely
this point after 30 years' service. This puts the prime minister and those
who will be fighting in his and President Bush's name in a vulnerable legal
position. Already lawyers are getting phone calls from anxious members of
the armed forces.
Blair accuses opponents of war of "appeasement" - in spite of the
fact that, in many cases, their active opposition to Saddam's dictatorship
well predates his. (I signed the 1987 early day motion against arms exports
to Iraq. Blair and Gordon Brown didn't.) If anyone is the "appeaser"
it is Blair, in his support for the US government's pre-emptive attack on
Saddam.
I am not anti-American. I was a member of the executive of the British-American
parliamentary group. I share at one remove four times over a grandmother with
Harry S Truman, and I hope to attend the celebrations in Missouri in May to
mark the anniversary of his birthday.
But many in this country think the fundamentalists now running the White House
are using Blair's support as a fig leaf against their critics. It is useful
for these people to say to their opponents: "But a British Labour prime
minister supports us."
If Britain had made it clear months ago that we would not be party to a US
attack on Iraq, US public opinion itself might have stopped this war.
Many in the Labour party believe Blair has misunderstood the pressing danger.
It comes not from Iraq, but from terrorism. If there is a link between al-Qaida
and Saddam Hussein, it is this: Osama bin Laden hates Saddam Hussein. On at
least two occasions Bin Laden's organisation has tried to assassinate Saddam.
The effect of this war, however, could well be to bring the pair together.
This is a war that will strengthen terrorism.
I don't think that Blair really understands the horrors of modern-day warfare.
In 1994 I visited Baghdad (all expenses paid by me) and saw the carbonated
limbs of women and children who had been impregnated against a wall by the
heat of just one cruise missile. In the current war, hundreds of cruise missiles
have been launched just to soften up the enemy.
We are told that the US intends to use incapacitating bio-chemical and depleted-uranium
weapons. We are receiving information that the it intends to use war in Iraq
as an opportunity to test out a range of weapons: cluster aviation bombs with
self-guided munitions and pulse bombs being examples.
The UN was created in response to the indiscriminate horror of modern warfare
in the 1940s. The UN's charter describes its role as saving "future generations
from the scourge of war". Surely that means that all those who claim
to uphold the UN charter should pursue peaceful solutions to their limits?
The draft work plans of the UN weapons inspectorate make clear that the inspectors
believed they could have made real progress down their non-violent path to
disarmament. The Labour party will not tolerate a leader who takes the country
into an avoidable war.
As Napoleon and Hitler found with the snow at the gates of Moscow, so Blair
and Bush might find that the biggest weapon of mass destruction they encounter,
before the gates of Baghdad, is the sun. They might be wise to pull out troops
now, before they are cooked in the sands of the desert while laying seige
to the city. They may lose political face; but the careers of Bush and Blair
are of little consequence compared to environmental mayhem and military agony.
· Tam Dalyell is Labour MP for Linlithgow and Father of the House of
Commons. A longer version of this article appears in Red Pepper magazine.
· www.redpepper.org.uk

the work of the 2,000-pound Mark-84 JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition)
bomb, the new workhorse of the U.S. military, is just beginning. In nanoseconds
it will release a crushing shock wave and shower jagged, white-hot metal fragments
at supersonic speed, shredding flesh, crushing cells, rupturing lungs, bursting
sinus cavities and ripping away limbs in a maelstrom of destruction. ...

As the Mark-84 JDAM strikes the ground, its fuse ignites a priming charge
that detonates 945 pounds of Tritonal, a silvery solid of TNT mixed with a
dollop of aluminum for stability.
The ensuing chemical reaction produces an expanding nucleus of hot gas that
swells the Mark-84's 14-inch-wide cast steel casing to almost twice its size
before the steel shears and fractures, showering a thousand pounds of white-hot
steel fragments at 6,000 feet per second and driving a shock wave of several
thousand pounds per square inch.

Metal fragments will travel about 3,800 feet, nearly three-quarters of a
mile. Bigger fragments of the bomb -- heavy pieces of the thick metal nose
cone, for instance -- will sail out a mile and a half

Israelis trained US troops in Jenin-style urban warfare
By Justin Huggler in Amman
29 March 2003 http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=391823
The American military has been asking the Israeli army for advice on fighting
inside cities, and studying fighting in the West Bank city of Jenin last April,
unnamed United States and Israeli sources have confirmed.